Analyzing Classified PaP Documents

[RadZakpak]

Back when Classified came out and textures were mined from the game, we realized that the Pack a Punch camo for the map could be one of five images, with three of them being blueprints for the Ray Gun, the Ray Gun Mk2, and the Monkey Bomb. The remaining two were collages of Intel documents from the Black Ops Campaign. Understandably, most people skipped over these because Black Ops Intel had been read and analyzed a long time ago. But after a closer inspection, there may be something more here.

Here are the two images in the highest quality I could find:

As far as I can tell, the two images are identical, just color inverted. On the surface they just look like a collage of campaign intel with some "Classified"  and "Top Secret" stamps all over. But if you look more closely, there are some blue markings made by some unknown individual that imply some curious things. I'm going to screenshot each of the markings and give my thoughts on what they may mean, as well as point out a couple other oddities I noticed.

 

I believe it says "Need eyes on this ASAP", and the man whose profile is being marked on is Jason Hudson, Alex Mason's CIA handler in Black Ops. I can't tell if the writer is someone saying to watch Hudson's moves, or if its is Hudson himself pointing out flaws in his profile. Either way, something worth pointing out that is long forgotten was Operation Charybdis, a mission that was supposed to take place in 1978 to kill Mason, Hudson, and Weaver as they were deemed dangerous to national security. This, of course, never took place as we see Mason and Hudson operating in the 80s in Black Ops 2. But it shows Hudson may have been seen as a loose cannon in the CIA, maybe he's made some enemies?

 

This was also written on Hudson's profile, where it states he is a capable soldier when the element of subtlety and finesse are needed. Whoever wrote in blue ink seems critical of Hudson or at least questions the wording here.

 

This just seems like a simple check mark over some text about the war in Vietnam. General William Westmoreland was the general at the time, and this text states a base of operations has been set up. Not much interesting here I think.

 

Here they simply marked a big X over Vietnam, which could be interpreted as a number of things. Not much to say.

Here we have a similar X, but seemingly over a faded CIA stamp, and this document is dated October 23rd, 1961. This did not seem to be a particularly important date in real life, campaign, or Zombies. But, crucially, this is just after Mason is captured and sent to Vorkuta. The CIA believed he was dead at this point, which will come up later on. There is also marked the roman numerals "IV", which pops up a few other times in this image.

 

Here we have Frank Woods' profile, also a member of Operation 40 with Hudson, Mason, Weaver, and Bowman. The blue ink marks out the word "patriotic", calling it questionable as a word to describe Frank Woods. Someone clearly has beef with him, which makes sense as Woods made plenty of enemies. But questioning his patriotism?

This paragraph simply mentions McNamara, and recon of the NVA's movement in Vietnam. Again, it is marked with "IV".

Here the word "Confidential" is crossed out, and 115 is written above it. This seems juicy, but what does it mean? I decided to look at the original document from Black Ops to see what it is about. For the most part it simply talks about the war in Vietnam, however, half the document is cut off in the above collage, but at the very bottom of the full document is this text:

Note: This is the only text that contains blacked out, confidential information on this whole document. It mentions transporting two things through Vietnam. Nova 6? 115?

Here "Project Nova" is scribbled through, and there is a check mark on some unreadable text. I can't be certain if this means anything.

This little excerpt comes from a pretty famous piece of intel that discusses German Wunderwaffen, and Die Glocke. This excerpt discusses a "Uranium club" in Germany to weaponise nuclear fission technology, but says it was disbanded in 1942 to pay for the war effort. The text to the top right is tough to read, but I believe it says "NOTE NUMBER 7". On the same document, the seventh item reads as so:

This references the collection of German assets after WW2 for research and development, quite like Operation Stapler. What does it have to do with this "Uranium Club"?

This paragraph references the mission Project Nova from the campaign. For those that do not remember, Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner, along with other Russian troops including Reznov and Petrenko, all arrive at a crashed German freighter in the ice, hoping to raid it for its supply of Nova 6, created by Steiner himself. Reznov and Petrenko are betrayed and Nova 6 is tested on them as Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner escape. British operatives arrive on the scene trying to capture some of the Nova 6 as Reznov makes his escape, blowing up the freighter as he leaves to prevent anyone from getting the Nova 6. The blue ink person highlighted "killed" and "explosion", possibly because they know that Reznov did not die along with the people on the ship? Or could they be implying, I don't know, 115 was present and people were not technically "killed" per se? Interesting, though.

The paragraph highlighted discusses "Mutually Assured Destruction", the notion that two sides armed with nuclear weapons would not fire upon one another as that would mean retaliation, and the end of all life on either side. The paragraph points out that sleeper agents exist in the US as well as a wealth of Nova 6 from the shell corporation GKM, of GK Nova fame. The blue ink writer places brackets here, and writes 115. Perhaps 115 may be a part of this sleeper agent plan as well? I would like to hear more from GK Nova experts on the matter.

 

So that marks all the instances of blue writing from some unknown individual in 1961. Some other things I noticed, however:

 

Here we have a profile along with a picture o Alex Mason, his eyes blacked out. On the surface this may seem like nothing, but again, the date marked was just shortly after Alex Mason was sent to Vorkuta, and the CIA believed him dead. Out of the members of Op 40 on this image: Mason, Bowman, Woods, and Hudson, Mason is the only one with blacked out eyes. Something also intriguing is that the profile behind his picture is not even his. It's the profile of Dimitri Petrenko, Viktor Reznov's close friend and playable character in World at War. Here is the original for comparison:

Why is this? I don't know.

 

The last thing I want to point out is the only direct depiction of zombies in this collage:

Here we have an image from Shi No Numa below the same page mentioning Germany's Uranium Club and Wunderwaffen. We know in Classified that the Pentagon was aware of the outbreak at Shi No Numa, and it's clearly important enough to be here.

 

Let me know if you spot anything else interesting in these images!

[anonymous]

Old school analysis, brains! Now I will come back later on this, as I currently have little time, but I am of the opinion that something 115-related certainly happened in Vietnam. Something to do with the Black Ops Campaign crew, explaining the 115 tattoo. First, I have to remember the chronology of the Campaign. Was Mason first captured by the Soviets, or do the Vietnam chapters happen prior?

In this poster you see the Shangri-La wonderweapon being hold. This also reminds me of the ammo crates in Shangri-La having both Russian and Vietnamese writing... (possible just re-used textures, though)

[RadZakpak]

2 hours ago, anonymous said:

Old school analysis, brains! Now I will come back later on this, as I currently have little time, but I am of the opinion that something 115-related certainly happened in Vietnam. Something to do with the Black Ops Campaign crew, explaining the 115 tattoo. First, I have to remember the chronology of the Campaign. Was Mason first captured by the Soviets, or do the Vietnam chapters happen prior

Mason is captured in 1961 during a failed assassination of Fidel Castro. He gets brainwashed in Vorkuta as a sleeper agent, escaping and returning to the US in October 1963. He then meets with JFK just 4 days after the events of Five, and JFK is assassinated just 12 days after this.

 

On Nov 12th, 1963, Mason, Woods, and Weaver enter Baikonur Cosmodrome, blow up a rocket, and witness the deaths of a bunch of German scientists. What's interesting to me here is according to Tag der Toten, all the scientists present at the Cosmodrome were killed or missing. So either a bunch more scientists were sent there shortly after Ascension, or maybe histories diverge here. The goal of the meeting in Five was to east Cold War tensions, and perhaps the simultaneous outbreaks did bring the US and Soviets closer, and this mission never happens.

 

The game then jumps ahead to Jan 21st, 1968, where the first mission in Vietnam begins. Mason is there with Hudson in Khe Sanh, apparently having not seen Woods in a while, and Woods arrives in a helicopter quote "looking like hammered shit." Maybe a 115-related mission he couldn't talk to Mason about?

 

And I agree some sort of activity must have gone on in Vietnam either by Division 9 or Group 935, and it bled over into the Cold War.

[anonymous]

Damn I really don't know where to begin with this. Okay, so something happened with Woods during the time Mason was gone. Their last mission done together before Vietnam was the one at Baikonur Cosmodrome, and I feel like we never really got an explanation for the purpose of this mission. They blow up a rocket, but why? Why did a team of one of the most skilled CIA soldiers needed to blow up this exact rocket? We know the Ascension Group was behind this, possibly connecting them with experiments on 115 and/or reaching Griffin Station. So what if Woods knew all this, what if he was instructed and told about everything. Mason might have been merely a pion, a lesser important character only used in the mission as a skillfull soldier. Woods could have been briefed about everything though, similar to Dempsey. This would be a reason why Woods was also in a later mission that was about 115-concerning matters: the one in Vietnam.

 

So between the Baikonur level and the first time Woods and Mason see each other again, Woods has done who knows what in Vietnam. It could have something to do with what General Vang Pao transported, the two strikethroughed words you already noted. We know from FIVE that the Americans possesed both Element 115 and Nova-6 at that time, so yeah, who knows.

1 hour ago, RadZakpak said:

And I agree some sort of activity must have gone on in Vietnam either by Division 9 or Group 935, and it bled over into the Cold War.

That is interesting actually. We know Vietnam used to be a French colony, but the moment France turned into the Nazi puppet state Vichy-France, Japanese troops could be stationed in Vietnam since they had a pact with the Nazi's. By the end of the war, Japan even demanded that Vietnam would be fully placed under their control, followed by short battles ending in France's defeat and Japan's victory. The picture of Shi no Numa in those files suddenly make me think about the possibility that the Rising Sun Facility could be in Vietnam as well. As location we only know that it lays somewhere in the Empire of Imperial Japan.

The location of the map appears (semi-)tropical, so maybe? Would be a cool extra political aspect for the later Vietnam War (as we also have a reason for the Angolan War thanks to Buried). Another possibility for what interesting may lay in Vietnam is the temple encountered in the Black Ops Multiplayer map 'Jungle'. The temple has the same textures as the temples in the map Shangri La, probably because of reused textures, but it might be because the temple could be another part of that same culture that built Shangri La. Is that why the Black Ops battles the NVA there? Could it house some ancient artifacts that scientists in Ancient Aliens/Keepers in both the Pentagon and Ascension Cosmodrome would love to investigate?

[RadZakpak]

4 hours ago, anonymous said:

Damn I really don't know where to begin with this. Okay, so something happened with Woods during the time Mason was gone. Their last mission done together before Vietnam was the one at Baikonur Cosmodrome, and I feel like we never really got an explanation for the purpose of this mission. They blow up a rocket, but why? Why did a team of one of the most skilled CIA soldiers needed to blow up this exact rocket? We know the Ascension Group was behind this, possibly connecting them with experiments on 115 and/or reaching Griffin Station. So what if Woods knew all this, what if he was instructed and told about everything. Mason might have been merely a pion, a lesser important character only used in the mission as a skillfull soldier. Woods could have been briefed about everything though, similar to Dempsey. This would be a reason why Woods was also in a later mission that was about 115-concerning matters: the one in Vietnam.

 

 

Here is a transcript from the opening cutscene of that mission that gives some context to the mission:

Quote

Interrogator: Executive Order, Operation Flashpoint... Rip out the heart of their Space Program. Eradicate their long range missile project. Take out the Ascension Group. Nazi scientists, corrupted by the Russians after the war.

Mason: Yes... He needed their knowledge. What they'd learned...!

An image of President Kennedy is shown

Interrogator: Operation 40 had planted a double agent working with the Ascension Group.

An image of Weaver is shown.

Mason: Grigori Weaver. His mission was to sabotage the rocket.

Interrogator: But something went wrong, Mason.

So the goal seems to be destroying the missile project and really the whole Ascension Group. The goal at the end was also to kill Kravchenko, which they failed to do. This is the mission briefing:

Quote

"Infiltrate the Baikonur Cosmodrome and eliminate Dragovich and the Ascension scientists."

The rocket could have been part of their attempts to reach the Moon, but I believe the Soviet Union had reinvented teleportation already by this point, before the Americans even, they just could not reach Griffin Station yet. It's also possible these missiles were going to be used offensively along with nuclear weapons, tipped with Nova 6 or Element 115. But that's all speculation at this point.

 

About Woods knowing and Mason not, I distinctly remember a part where a bunch of scientists are being burned up from an explosion, and Mason feels sympathy for them while Woods says they were Nazis and to let them burn. If he knows truly what they had done, he'd definitely be right feeling this way.

 

Man all this really has so much potential for storytelling.

[RadZakpak]

This might have been worth another thread, but I'll post here since it is related to the campaign.

 

Okay so started playing through Black Ops again, and wow is it still awesome. On the mission with the rocket, Grigori Weaver, who is a Russian working for the CIA, is supposed to sabotage the Ascension Group's rocket program and leave without anyone knowing. Mason, Woods, Bowman, and Brooks are nearby to extract him if things go wrong, which they do. Weaver gets caught and has his eye cut out by Kravchenko, so Op40 is forced to do things a little more directly. So primary goal seems to be destroying the rockets and sabotaging the Ascension Group.

 

I got to the mission Project Nova, where you play as Reznov as he is betrayed by Dragovich in 1945. You find out the origins of Nova 6 through its creator, Friedrich Steiner. I recorded a clip of a short explanation by Steiner:

To summarize, Steiner worked on something called the Giftiger Sturm Project, or Toxic Storm Project. He began work in 1943 on chemical weapons as Germany realized they were losing the war. Nova 6 was developed, and its entire known supply is held within this crashed ship.

 

The ship crashed after British bombings, and the SS was ordered to search for what remained of the ship, but the war came to an end and it was abandoned. The SS had been ordered to blow it up if the British came for it, but they never did. Reznov and Petrenko are betrayed by Dragovich, and used as demonstrations of what Nova 6 can do. But as Petrenko is killed, British Commandos arrive to take the Nova 6 present there for themselves. Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner escape without the Nova 6, and Reznov is left behind. Reznov decides to set off the bombs and destroy the entire ship so that neither side can have Nova 6.

 

Steiner then works with the Soviets and several chemists, including Daniel Clarke, to bring Nova 6 back better than ever to be used with sleeper agents in the US, distributing it under the shell company GKM. In 1959, Dragovich gets party approval to use Nova 6 as a chemical weapon in the event of WWIII. In 1964, Clarke is brought on to stabiliize volatile compounds. By 1968, Nova 6 was back and ready to use.

 

So, with all that explanation and backstory out of the way, how does this affect Zombies? First talking about the Nova crawlers, they seem to be a creation of Group 935 due to their presence at Griffin Station. Though, it's possible they appeared there after the Americans arrived at the station. Regardless, would this mean Steiner worked with Group 935? It's certainly possible, though I'm puzzled why this crashed freighter would seem so important if Group 935 had their own supply of the gas.

 

Skipping ahead, the Americans recreate Nova crawlers in the Pentagon using pig DNA as late as 1963, however, in 1964 the Soviets are still trying to perfect the compound, so how is the United States able to utilize the gas? I believe that this form of Nova 6 is weaker than the later Soviet variant. In-game, Nova 6 is little more than an annoyance to even normal people like JFK and McNamara, let alone Ultimis/Primis. The Nova 6 used by the Soviets is fatal within seconds. I believe the Nova 6 being used in the US is inferior, and acts much slower than the real thing. This may be because they synthesized it using old research from Group 935, rather than having Steiner himself working for them.

 

This all begs the question, though, do the Soviets and Americans start to work together after the 1963 outbreaks at the cosmodrome and Pentagon? Working together to fight Samantha was the plan with the meeting, but with it falling apart, tensions in the Cold War may still be high. RUSHMORE, for example, is programmed to be staunchly anti-Communist and anti-Russian, so I still believe there was no true collaboration at the time. The Americans also decided that provoking Samantha is the wrong thing to do, and will only cause more outbreaks. So, in short, I believe the rest of the campaign in 1968 could have still taken place the way it did with the sleeper agents.

 

Alright, I apologize, that was a little all over the place.

[anonymous]

Thank you for the clever analysis. Concerning Steiner, I am not sure if he was actually a member of Group 935 but he surely cooperated with them in some way, as Group 935 had full access to his Nova-6 research. What might be interesting to note is that Steiner later, when working for the Soviets, also was involved in the brainwashing of the sleeper agents. So it seems like he had some experience in mind control. Combining this fact with the pressence of Nova-6 at the Kino station, Group 935's research station to mind control of the undead, I find it striking it was Steiner, mr. Mindcontrol, whose invention and research was used. Now remember the American doctor Lehman, who discovered that Element 115 in a gaseous form was the key to control the undead? 

 

"In the case of a corpse, the 115 re-loads the central nervous system, but the neurons have already broken down and can no longer be re-synced with the occupying life force. It seems to me that neurons are that messenger between a conscious nervous system and ones' life force.

This would explain why Dr. Lehman's use of gaseous 115 (presumably Nova 6) was effective in creating a controllable zombie, as the test subject was alive at the time of the dosing, and after death, reanimation followed immediately, effectively stabilizing decomposition and maintaining the neural activity." - NabrZHunter

 

Perhaps Nova-6 gas, combined with the projector screen, made zombies controllable (on a lesser degree than with pure 115 gas), and this was Steiners role in Group 935/cooperation with Group 935. Nova-6 gas, mindcontrol. 

12 hours ago, RadZakpak said:

The Nova 6 used by the Soviets is fatal within seconds. I believe the Nova 6 being used in the US is inferior, and acts much slower than the real thing.

That's a real good reason why the effect of Nova-6 gas encountered in Kino and Five is so much different than that in Rebirth Island, USSR. Story explains gameplay, I love this.

 

Concerning the latter stuff, it remains a big mystery to what extent the Campaign, Multiplayer and Zombies universe correlate. I believe we have one crucial point of difference between Campaign and Zombies, and that is Room 9, Mason's interrogation room. Campaign ends with the mission Revelations, in which Mason breaks out of his imprisonment, while in the Zombies universe the facility seems to be overrun by the undead. Perhaps this event was the very first difference, the point of splitting between the two timelines. Mason is being hold there in the year 1968, at the same time as the Nova-6 crisis. So maybe a global alliance of controlling/researching zombies and Element 115 formed after 1968 and after the Nova-6 crisis? One thing that buggers me though, is that if Mason never left Room 9, the US would have felt victim to the Soviet sleeper cells and the Nova-6 (and the events happening in the US after 1968 don't give me the expression that the continent is a ruined post-apocalyptic place). So maybe the zombie outbreak at Room 9 happened earlier and got suppressed and under control quickly? 

[RadZakpak]

28 minutes ago, anonymous said:

 

Concerning the latter stuff, it remains a big mystery to what extent the Campaign, Multiplayer and Zombies universe correlate. I believe we have one crucial point of difference between Campaign and Zombies, and that is Room 9, Mason's interrogation room. Campaign ends with the mission Revelations, in which Mason breaks out of his imprisonment, while in the Zombies universe the facility seems to be overrun by the undead. Perhaps this event was the very first difference, the point of splitting between the two timelines. Mason is being hold there in the year 1968, at the same time as the Nova-6 crisis. So maybe a global alliance of controlling/researching zombies and Element 115 formed after 1968 and after the Nova-6 crisis? One thing that buggers me though, is that if Mason never left Room 9, the US would have felt victim to the Soviet sleeper cells and the Nova-6 (and the events happening in the US after 1968 don't give me the expression that the continent is a ruined post-apocalyptic place). So maybe the zombie outbreak at Room 9 happened earlier and got suppressed and under control quickly? 

I looked into the room itself, and it is a part of a National Security Agency facility, but the state in the US it is located in is not clear. I was thinking of a document in Classified most of us probably skipped over for good reason:

Quote

The JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
WASHINGTON D.C.

31 OCT 1962

MEMORANDUM TO: THE SECRETARY OF DEFENCE

SUBJECT: Classified experiment at secret pentagon laboratory evacuation advised

1. At 10:25 am event unknown: hundred dead humans reanimate in an unconscious frenzy. They are coming in hoards and seem to be going after any living thing they can find. We believe it is a virus but have not yet gotten confirmation.

2.Whatever it is, it is spreading at a rapid rate. Recommend D.C. be completely evacuated and quarantined until we know how to proceed.

3.The Advisory committee for International Science and Engineering states that at the current rate, within the next 72 hours 1 million people will be exposed to the infection. That number will only multiply until we can assess the cause and try to neutralize the spread.

For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Thisisahll Maydeup

Chairman

Joint Chiefs of Staff

Thisisahll Maydeup seems to indicate this is not meant to be taken seriously, but that could very well be a red herring. This 1962 outbreak would be before the Lehman outbreak and the two Pentagon outbreaks, and it's many years before Mason is actually detained by the CIA to be interrogated. We could humor the possibility that the man in the chair on the Zombies menu is not actually Mason, and this could even be the DC outbreak.

 

Thinking of it now, Thisisahll Maydeup might not actually be an indication to us that the contents of the memorandum are made up, but rather an indication to people at the Pentagon and the Secretary of Defense that this is a test, or a drill, to practice in the event of a major outbreak what the response time would be. This would certainly be a concern with undead tests going down under the Pentagon.

[caljitsu]

On 2/2/2020 at 11:05 PM, RadZakpak said:

 

The paragraph highlighted discusses "Mutually Assured Destruction", the notion that two sides armed with nuclear weapons would not fire upon one another as that would mean retaliation, and the end of all life on either side. The paragraph points out that sleeper agents exist in the US as well as a wealth of Nova 6 from the shell corporation GKM, of GK Nova fame. The blue ink writer places brackets here, and writes 115. Perhaps 115 may be a part of this sleeper agent plan as well? I would like to hear more from GK Nova experts on the matter.

Now we have to turn to Nightmares/Blackout for this, but first:

 

GKM's "research" into Project Nova was seemingly acquired by the Tacitus corporation (more on that later), and then Tacitus' entire Stock, along with all of their weapons research, was acquired by Coalescence, the manufacturers of the DNI (this acquisition included all project Nova research). In the 2070's, they "accidentally" released a compound known as 61-15 into the Atmosphere, causing the events of Nightmares.

 

However, in Blackout we see something else. Savannah Mason, now CEO of the Tacitus corporation after Mendez is having Tacitus extensive research into a field she dubs "Archetypes". We have a lack of understanding into what exactly these are, but it seemingly relates to forcing an individual to fully assume the identity of another. Victor Reznov is explicitly called "The First Archetype", and I suggest listening to the Audio Logs in BO4's specialist stories for more info on that.

 

Now in Blackout, the circle you see closing in on the island is referred to as the "Shield", with a gas on the other side of it. This gas, I firmly believe, is 61-15. When under its influence, not only does the subject feel the standard effects of a nerve agent, but they also see visions one of which being of Samantha, as well as of Numbers.

 

Given the fact that 61-15 creates Zombies and is green in colour and, of course, gaseous - it seems fairly obvious that it is an amalgamation of Nova 6 and Element 115. What's interesting is the fact that in Classified, Doctor Laman begins to implement procedures devised by Richtofen that involve turning 115 to a gaseous state and forcing a living human to inhale it, killing them and creating a special kind of Zombie. One that can obey commands. This is then suggested as a potential chemical weapon. With that, I'm going to leave you with this image from GKNOVA6 - take note of the arms

 

 

[RadZakpak]

Treyarch may have pulled through once again with this mystery.

 

This is apparently a leaked image from Warzone, and I'm not sure if it is part of something that has been revealed yet. It has something to do with mission intel. So if you aren't interested in leaked stuff, look away.

 

Recently this document popped up amongst others from Warzone data mining:

 

This immediately popped out to me, out of all of them, because of the blue writing. The handwriting is similar to the writing we have analyzed in this very thread, found in Classified. Was the blue writing in Classified some sort of hint at what we'll see happening in Cold War? I'm very interested to see where this goes.